AUTHOR’S NOTE: The intent of this column is entertainment, usually at the expense of truth and accuracy, but I sneak in some good information as well. It is up to the reader to distinguish between entertainment and reality amidst all the circumlocution and misdirection in these sketches.
Q: There has been talk of reintroducing herds of woolly mammoth from the DNA of “Buttercup”, a specimen discovered in 2013. If this is successful, how will it change the risk factors in our kayaking trips?
A: Not at all. “They” (George Church, a Harvard University geneticist, and a company called, interestingly enough, Colossal) would not be stupid enough to release these quadruple-insulated, R-14,000, multi-billion-dollar ice-age creatures into the hot, humid environment around Houston, so we would never cross paths with them.
Possible Exception: Ken McCormick might encounter them while he is in Alaska in the summers.
Q: Are there examples of Brownian motion we can see in our paddling adventures?
A: Of course, you cannot see Brownian movement since it happens to particles on a molecular level. The movement of whirligig beetles on the water is somewhat analogous to the erratic movement of the particles being bombarded by collisions with molecules, but much slower, and far more entertaining.
Q: Last year, scientists determined that the universe is expanding much faster than they previously thought (73 plus or minus 1 kilometer per second per megaparsec), and that it will double in size in the next 10 billion years. This means that the matter contained in the universe will also “stretch out”. Does this mean our kayaks will be proportionally longer, wider, and weaker than they are now?
Pre-2022 timeline of the universe (now 26.7 billion years from Big Bang)
A: Yes, but please allow me to add that, in practical terms, I would not factor this into any near-term purchasing decisions.
My kayak now
My kayak in 10 billion years
Q: Considering the previous Q&A, and with the latest thinking that the universe is between 13.8 billion and 26.7 billion years old, we actually own our kayaks at a time when matter has already doubled or tripled (assuming straight-line expansion). So, are our kayaks already longer, wider and weaker than they would have been closer to the beginning of the universe?
A: Yes, right you are. But again, in practical terms, just 5 billion years ago our earth was all molten lava, so no kayaks. It was just a thousandth of a billion years ago that mammals came on the scene, and ten thousandths of a billion years ago that anyone resembling us appeared, and so you can see that a negligible amount of expansion has taken place since then.
Q: What does conservationist and humanitarian nature and fiction author and essayist Barry Lopez say about our interactions with rivers?
WORD OF THE MONTH:
Used in a sentence:
GOOD ONE:
MUG O’ THE MONTH:
OVERHEARD . . .
Running feels great, unless
you compare it to not running.
PARTING THOUGHT:
John O’Donohue